Hamas Got What It Wanted From Flotilla; And It Wasn't Humanitarian Aid

The flotilla of boats that were attempting to break Israel's blockade of Gaza was never about providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, but to create an incident around which Hamas could rally support and anti-Israel propaganda for use going forward.

The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday condemned acts which resulted in the loss of civilian lives on ships carrying pro-Palestinian campaigners and aid to Gaza, and called for an impartial investigation into Israel's deadly raid.

In a statement, the Security Council also called for the immediate release of hundreds of international activists and the six ships being held by Israel.

Anti-Israel protests erupted on Tuesday in Gaza and across South East Asia. There were also demonstrations in Israel - both for and against military action.

The U.N. statement said at least 10 people died — previously nine were thought to have been killed — after Israeli troops boarded Turkish-backed aid ships bound for Gaza, sparking outcry across the world.

The Security Council had met in emergency session on the situation, with most members of the 15-nation body calling for a thorough investigation.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told lawmakers in the Parliament Tuesday that "this bloody massacre by Israel on ships that were taking humanitarian aid to Gaza deserves every kind of curse."

Hamas succeeded on that point as thugs on board those ships attacked Israeli soldiers hoping to turn back those ships with nonlethal force and assaulted those soldiers with all manner of weapons in the process. Israeli soldiers finally had no choice but to use deadly force to protect themselves from the onslaught by the thugs on board.

Israel and Egypt have been blockading Gaza because the terror group Hamas remains in charge and has repeatedly siphoned off humanitarian aid for its own purposes. Gaza isn't wanting for food or other basics; those are found in abundance. What is lacking are the materials that Hamas can use to build weapons and tunnels and other terror infrastructure for use in their ongoing war with Israel.

The flotilla raid was just the latest skirmish, and Hamas has apparently gotten the upper hand in the propaganda war. The UN and Hamas supporters around the world are crying for Israeli blood and demands that the blockade be ended. The demands for investigations will only escalate, even though videos taken during the raids show that Israeli forces showed tremendous restraint and only after thugs on board began seriously assaulting those Israeli soldiers that the Israelis defended themselves with deadly force.

Turkey is playing their role in supporting Hamas by not only enabling the flotilla to travel from Turkey to attempt a run against Israel's blockade, but is pushing the Iran-Syria axis line despite having close ties to Israel for years.

Meanwhile, Egypt has lifted its portion of the blockade following the raid. At the same time, Israeli forces killed two terrorists in a firefight as they attempted to infiltrate Israel from Gaza.

And the kassams have again been fired into Israel.

Where's the world's condemnations of these ongoing terror attacks against Israel?

UPDATE:
And who should be behind organizing the flotilla? A group seeking peaceful coexistence with Israel? Hardly.

Lets party? With AK-47s? Looks real peaceful. This was one of the organizers, and he clearly doesn't look like he was intent on peace with Israel, but to provoke and create an international incident.

UPDATE:
This report has more information on the background of one of the groups involved in organizing the flotilla - and their connections with international jihadi terror organizations and terror plots.

Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.

And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.

The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.

UPDATE:
Despite protestations to the contrary, Israel is fully within its rights under international law to enforce the blockade to prevent Hamas from regrouping, rearming, or using materials obtained from ships running the blockade in its war against Israel's very existence.